It is important for pet owners to train their pets because a well-trained pet makes a better companion whose presence in the owner's home is enjoyable to the owner, and is not marred by bad pet behavior. Unfortunately, training a pet well is not a simple task. When training a pet, it is important to employ good and effective training skills that are applied evenly and consistently. Without the even and consist application of the training exercises, the pet will often become confused.
Additionally, training also requires an investment of time and commitment. Many busy pet owners find it difficult to find sufficient free time to devote to training their pets. Due to these time limitations, a good training tool should enable the trainer to train the animal efficiently.
The lack of time and pet training skill causes many pet owners to employ professional trainers. Although professional pet training helps to result in a better trained pet, professional training has its draw backs. In particular, the labor intensive nature of pet training results in significant training expenses. These expenses can make professional training unaffordable to many pet owners.
Good training methodology should avoid the use of techniques that do not have unwanted side effects on the animals. Training techniques that often result in unwanted side effects include those techniques that involve negative reinforcement or punishment.
One example of a training technique or device that often has unwanted side effects is a shock collar that is employed in training dogs. A shock collar comprises a collar that is worn around a dog's neck that usually includes a battery, a radio receiver and a pair of electrodes. If the dog performs an unwanted behavior, the dog is given a shock (of variable intensity) so that the dog associates the undesirable behavior with the undesirable consequence, and thereby, stops performing the undesirable act.
One application for shock collars is dog training fences, such as those sold under the INVISIBLE FENCE® brand. Such dog training fences include wires buried in the ground to define an area within a user's yard, wherein the buried wire serves as a boundary to that area. A shock collar is placed on the dog that when the dog approaches the buried wire, an audible signal may be given to warn the dog of his approach to the wire. When the dog crosses the wire, the wire will signal the shock collar to release an electrical charge to shock the dog. Through training, the dog will learn to associate a particular spot in the yard where the wire is buried with the adverse reaction of obtaining a shock. This will cause the dog to stay within the boundary defined by the owner's placement of the buried wire to avoid receiving such shocks.
Another application for shock collars is in connection with bark training. In such cases, the collar can be rigged with a microphone to pick up barking and deliver a shock to the dog when the dog barks. Alternately, the shock collar can be equipped with a remote control device that the user actuates when the dog is barking at an inappropriate time, or else fails to stop barking when so instructed by the user.
Although the shock collars used in such training exercises are tools for training the animal to observe or avoid observing certain behaviors, shock collars have draw backs. According to the Merck Veterinary Manual, physical punishments, such as shock collars almost always make an already aggressive dog even more aggressive. Such aggressive behaviors are an undesirable side effect of the use of such shock collars.
Because of these undesirable side effects, many dog trainers believe that such shock collars should not be used. Rather, many believe that a dog is better trained through the use of training techniques that rely more heavily on positive reinforcement, wherein the dog is rewarded for performing a desired behavior, or alternately, rewarded for not performing an non-desirable behavior by the dog being given a reward such as a treat or something else that the dog likes and that makes the dog happy.
There are a variety of behaviors that trainers will attempt to teach an animal to either perform or to avoid performing. For example, dogs are often trained to avoid unwanted behaviors such as barking at the door, jumping on people, resource guarding against other dogs and resource guarding against people. Resource guarding refers to a situation where the dog jealously guards a resource, such as its food. To guard this resource the dog will act in an aggressive manner, such as by barking or snapping at people who approach the dog when it is eating. This behavior is caused because the dog is afraid that its food may be stolen by the other dog or person.
There are also behaviors that pet handlers and owners desire to train the dog to perform, such as crate training. Crate training involves teaching a dog to voluntarily go into its crate at those times, when the user wants the dog to go into its crate. Another desired behavior is for the dog to come to its owner when it is called by its owner. Because of the presence of a large number of animals, it is important for kennel managers to be able to teach their dog good manners, and to counter-condition the fear that an animal might have of another dog. Additionally, because of the large number of animals, it is often desired by kennel owners to be able to automate feeding and record the amount of food eaten by an animal, as a labor-saving feature.
In addition to the training exercises described above, other training exercises exist for dogs involved in sports. For example, training can help to teach a dog agility skills, and also teach a dog to behave properly for a competition obedience-type sports.
Further, those who employ working dogs, such as service dogs, military and police dogs, train their dogs to perform certain acts, and refrain from performing other acts. For example, service dogs are often trained to be able to pull on objects at a constant pressure. This behavior is employed by the dog to help pull people out of wheel chairs. The dog can best be taught to accomplish this task by pulling on a toy held by the wheel chair confined person at a constant pressure. If the dog pulls in a jerky manner (which is the usual behavior that dog's exhibit), the non-constant pressure may create instabilities in the person getting in and out of the wheel chair, and can be more detrimental than valuable to the person getting out of the wheel chair.
Those familiar with training dogs will appreciate that other skill sets and training exercises can occur and be used to train dogs.
Successfully performing training exercises with animals requires attributes such as precise timing, clearly defined criteria, a good rate of reinforcement, consistency, and frequent repetition to ensure that the dog learns the trained activities. For the reasons discussed above, it is often difficult for an owner to achieve these attributes, as many owners lack the time and discipline to perform these training functions effectively, or the monetary resources to have a professional trainer perform these actions. Therefore, it would be helpful if one could automate those tasks, to help train the dog even without the need for human input, or at least with a reduced amount of human input.
One of the central components of many dog training devices is the reinforcement dispensing device. For the reasons discussed above, the preferred embodiment of the present invention uses a reinforcement dispensing device that provides positive reinforcement opposed to the negative reinforcement or positive punishment dispensed by a shock collar. In particular, the Applicant and others have found that one of the best and most reliable rewards for animals, and especially dogs is a treat. A treat might comprise a food product for the dog, or some sort of “treat-like” food product for the dog, or for that matter, any consumable item that the animal enjoys, and is capable of consuming or using only over a short time period, so that the animal will soon desire another treat, so that future desired behaviors can be subsequently rewarded.
One of the difficulties that one encounters with treat dispensing devices is that many of them dispense treats inconsistently, and are limited in the types of treats that they can dispense. Since a wide variety of treat types exist, including many different types of food types and since a wide variety of preferences exist, it would be useful to have a treat dispensing device that is capable of dispensing a wide variety of treats in a controlled, consistent and reliable manner.
Therefore, one object of the present invention is to provide such a treat dispensing device.
The presence of one or more sensors would be useful to employ in a training program as they would allow the system or the owner to increase his knowledge of the animal's condition and or behavior. For example, one type of sensor(s) might comprise a microphone capable of picking up auditory signals from the dog such as barking. Another type of sensor might be a position attitude (pitch, yaw, roll) location sensor that relates to the location and position of the dog.
It is therefore one object of the present invention to provide, in a preferred embodiment, one or more sensors that are capable of providing information about a subject such as an animal being trained. This information may include information relating to the animal's location, its position, its actions, and/or its physiological conditions. The information obtained about the animal can be employed as an input in the system to decide whether to dispense a positive reinforcement (such as a treat) to the animal being trained.
Another issue that has reduced the ability of some prior known food dispensing devices relates to the fact that many devices can only be placed in a limited number of places to such as being restricted to being placed on a floor or horizontal surface. For example, since many service dogs are used to service wheelchair bound patients, it would be helpful to have a reinforcement device such as feeder, that was both attachable to the owner's wheelchair and placeable on a floor so that the treats could be dispensed at the location of the owner.
It is therefore another object of the preferred embodiment of the present invention to provide a feeder that is capable of being used in a wide variety of locations and with a wide variety of devices, to make the feeder more useable to a variety of circumstances.
Another desirable feature of a training device is an ability of the device to be actuated by the animal being trained. Certain training behaviors exist wherein it is desired that the animal being trained perform a particular function.
For example, service dogs are often trained to perform such functions as turning lights on and off, and retrieving drinks for humans out of a refrigerator. As such, providing the dog with a dog actuation device (e.g. a light switch), training the dog to actuate the actuation device, and rewarding the dog therefor, can pro-vide a valuable training tool for the dog, and especially service dogs that are trained to perform such positive functions.
Therefore, it is an object of a preferred embodiment of the present invention to provide a dog training system that incorporates the use of dog or pet actuated devices, both for helping to train the dog to perform, and then, when trained, to enable the dog to initiate certain activities such as opening refrigerator doors, in response to stimuli.